Letter: Chris Lauzen walks the walk

In this time of greatly reduced personal spending, we should think about some people who never seem to stop spendingâ€”namely our Illinois state legislators.

Despite a seemingly endless list of schemes to collect more money from you (lottery, cigarette and liquor taxes, casino taxes, sales of paid-for state assets) our state government never seems to have enough. And despite this yearâ€™s spending increase, which like all other years far outstrips the rate of inflation, we are basically bankrupt and shutting down state services.

Despite a mere 10 percent population increase, our state spending is up 236 percent since 1994. Thatâ€™s an average annual spending increase of 5.9 percent, almost twice the inflation rate, which means that our inflation-adjusted spending has increased by 54 percent over the past 15 years. What would happen to your family if your personal spending was on this path? If our state government were a person, weâ€™d have to sign it up for an â€œintervention,â€ and weâ€™d have to sign ourselves up too, since weâ€™re the â€œenablersâ€.

This Feb. 2, you have an opportunity to help stop this catastrophe. Every political candidate claims to oppose government â€œbusiness as usual,â€ but Chris Lauzen, our state senator in the 25th Senate District, actually walks the walk. His pro-taxpayer voting record is simply astounding.

The big spenders in our legislature have amassed plenty of money to attack Chris this year. They would love nothing more than a clearer path to your wallet so that they can enrich themselves even more.

You can stop them with a vote for Chris Lauzen, State Senator for the 25th Senate District.